FROM KARELIA WITH LOVE

by Larisa Boichenko, chair of the Karelia Center for Gender Studies (KTsGI), and Ph.D. in History.

Dear friends and readers of You and We: I'm very glad that you're holding in your hands the first regional issue of our beloved journal, dedicated to the Republic of Karelia, and the activities of Karelia's women and women's organizations. I wanted very much to tell you about the forests, lakes, and wetlands of our region, about our beloved city Petrozavodsk, and, of course about the status of our women. But to write about the numbers, which are insufficient (in our official statistics) to permit analysis of the actual status of women, or to write about how many months we've already gone without receiving our salaries and child welfare subsidies, or about how hard it is under such conditions to "raise" children, not to mention our at times bewildered husbands, seemed not terribly interesting. [She therefore decided to rely instead on information based on in-depth interviews with ten activists in Karelia's women's movement.] I also provide for you the answers of two of these activists - a Karelian and a Russian - and I hope that those whom I didn't manage to interview this time won't be offended; they too are well known and much valued at our Karelian Center for Gender Studies.WHY DON'T YOU HAVE SLANTED EYES? I remember, during the 1970s, I was traveling with some other 14 and 15 year-olds from Karelia to one of Russia's children's camps, called "Orlenok." We were taking the train, and not far from Tuapse, a woman came into our train car. Having heard a question: "Where are you kids from?" and the answer, "From Karelia," the woman started to look at us suspiciously, and burst out, "And how is it that your eyes aren't slanted, and you speak Russian so well? Did they teach you that in Korea?" We laughed until we cried; we'd never expected that our Republic, located in the northwestern European part of Russia, could be confused with the foreign, Asiatic Korea. That insignificant moment on the train touched me so much that almost thirty years later, I am still trying everywhere I go to talk as much as I can about Karelia, about its history and culture, about its wonderful people: Karelians and Veps, Russians and Finns, Ukrainians and Jews. In the Republic of Karelia 470,000 people live together in friendship and harmony, representing more than 50 nationalities.MAMA, I'M A KARELIAN. When my son was about 5 years old, he came home one day from daycare and asked: "Mama, am I really a Karelian?" My first reaction was confusion: our family combines many nationalities, although the only Karelians we had were friends (in fact, as I found out later, my son honestly thought that several of those friends were our blood relatives, and this pleased me greatly). Taking advantage of my silence, my son continued to express his thoughts, asking questions, and answering them immediately: "I was born in Petrozavodsk, right? Yes, in Petrozavodsk. And Petrozavodsk is the capital of Karelia, right? Yes. So, that means I'm Karelian. We were learning a poem today called 'We Karelians' and the teacher said that Karelians are people who were born in Karelia." I smiled at that point and said, "Well, of course, look how well you explained it, and moreover you feel like you're a Karelian, so that means you are."
Somewhat later, when my son took classes in Finnish (Karelian and Veps classes appeared only recently), he had other questions and revelations. Once, coming back with his grandmother from a trip to Moscow, he told me about how he'd met some women in Red Square, who were speaking in Finnish. He said hello to them, and they asked him, "What's a child who speaks such good Finnish doing in Moscow?" And when they heard the answer -- I'm from Karelia -- they started to hug and kiss him, and say, "You're one of us!" and gave him a bible. That was 1990, and that bible in Finnish was the first bible ever to appear in our house. And we live based on the idea that all people are not only brothers -- but also sisters.WHAT KIND OF LAND IS KARELIA? [In this section, the author describes the physical geographic history of Karelia. In sum, Karelia is a land of many lakes and rivers; nearly half its territory is forested. Karelia also boasts various building materials such as marble and granite, used in palaces and in the subway stations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, among other places.]A LITTLE HISTORY. Between the 9th and 12th centuries, the territory of Karelia was part of Kievan Rus, then, for nearly all the middle ages, a part of Novgorod principality, but in 1478 was transferred to the rulership of Moscow. From the 16th to 18th centuries, the Karelian lands were administered by Moscow. After the October Revolution of 1917, Karelia received statehood for the first time, as the Karelian Labor Commune, formed on June 8, 1920, then on June 25, 1923 was transformed into the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. After the end of the Soviet-Finnish war (the "Winter War") in 1939, on March 31, 1940 the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was created. Its territory was increased by the land captured from Finland and became the 16th republic of the USSR until July 16, 1956, when it again was given the lower status of Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Since November 13, 1991, it has been called the Republic of Karelia.WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN KARELIA?
Historically, the attitude to women in Karelia was patriarchal, but more respectful than in central Russia, judging from the runes of the Karelo-Finnish epic poem "Kalevala." It was never easy to survive in the harsh northern conditions. Many men began to spend all winter away, working in the cities of St. Petersburg, Revel, Riga, Helsingfors, and elsewhere in order to earn money through various trades, and would return to Karelia for the sowing season. Women were left to manage the home and children, and having returned from a 4 or 5 month absence, a man had to take a woman's opinion into account.
Unfortunately the history of Karelia, as is the case with many other histories, was written by male historians, and about men. In our history, we either see no women's faces or see them only in connection with women's so-called "natural predestination," which undeservedly alienates us from women's personality, from her soul. This situation changed at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, when schoolgirls from Petrozavodsk began to enter the Bestuzhev Higher Courses for Women. Female political exiles were sometimes even sent to Karelia, since our region was considered "Siberia just-beyond-the-Capital." At the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s, "women delegates meetings" began their activity, organizing women according to their place of residence (later, according to place of work). These organizations did a lot of useful work toward eliminating women's illiteracy, but they were not "civic" organizations in the full sense of the word, because they operated under close [communist] party scrutiny. At the end of the 1930s, Stalin announced that the "women question" in the USSR had been solved once and for all, but this slogan only masked what was actually the super-exploitation of women. In the 1960s during the "thaw" [this refers to Khrushchev's political liberalization - transl.], women's councils (zhensovety) began to appear in Karelia, organized on a territorial basis (by city, district, etc.). Their goal was to struggle with or make up for inadequacies in production and daily life, child care, and leisure activities. The action of these women's councils was not directed toward the achievement of actual equality for women and men.
During perestroika, at the end of the 1980s, other women's organizations began to arise in Karelia, alongside with the traditional women's councils. These included the association of women-writers, "Mariia," which unites the creative intelligentsia; and the Karelian republic committee of soldiers' mothers, which was created in order to solve a concrete task - ameliorating the conditions of army service for their sons. In 1994, the Union of Women of the Republic of Karelia, and the women's club "Elita" were registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Karelia. The Karelian Center for Gender Studies - the first women's organization not to hide its feminist views - registered in 1995. THE ASSISTANCE OF WOMEN FROM FINLAND. The Republic of Karelia occupies a particular place in Russia, namely, it has the longest (700 km) land border. with neighboring Finland, which has its own complex history. Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom, and then for more than 100 years was part of the Russian empire. Perhaps this is why the women of Finland, relying on the idea of national self determination, were the first in history to achieve the right to vote in 1906, at a time when the great principality of Finland was part of Russia. The women of Karelia, along with the other women of Russia, achieved this right in 1917. It was precisely the women of Finland who gave us a helping hand, when they saw that the reforms, starting with perestroika, were striking women hardest. This help was in the form of humanitarian assistance, such as aid to the needy, and assistance in the field of education, and also in recreating women's organizations on the former Finnish territories. Thus, in 1992, the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Karelia registered the women's civic organization "Marta" -- in Kurkieki village, in Lakhdenpokhsk district -- which had begun its activities in that village at the start of the 20th century. The Karelian-Finnish Forum, "The Modern World through Women's Eyes," was widely well-received in our republic in March 1996, and represented the first time that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the statestructures worked together on an equal footing. Now the next, second, Forum is being prepared -- this one will be Finnish-Karelian. It will take place in November 1998, in the city of Oulu (Finland), where the northernmost university in the Republic of Finland is located.ASSISTANCE FROM AMERICAN FOUNDATIONS. The people of Karelia relate to international aid, including American aid, in various ways. But I personally am very grateful to the Ford Foundation, which supported my trip to Beijing for the Fourth Worldwide Women's Conference in September 1995. Later, the activity of the Karelian Center for Gender Studies was supported by the embassies of the Netherlands and Great Britain, and by German organizations, but the biggest support we received was in grants from the Ford and Eurasia foundations, for an "Information-Education Center for Women of the Republic of Karelia." Working with women from the provinces, I would like to make note of the activity of: Nina Dembitskaia, from the Karelian village of Sel'ga, in Medvezh'egorosk district; of Ada Iakhontova from Kondopogi; Nina Sitkareva from Kemi; Galina Eremina and Natalia Dzaparidze from Pitkiarant; Liubov Dubinina from Segezhi; Svetlana Chernobai from Sortavala, and many others who, thanks to the support of the US Agency for International Development, were able to attend three-day seminars in Petrozavodsk, conducted by our Gender Center to support the women's organizations in various regions of Karelia. The Karelian Center for Gender Studies is now participating again in a grant competition, and hopes to be able to continue its programs of support to Karelia's NGOs.THE GOVERNMENT AND WOMEN'S NGOs IN KARELIA. Although they criticize each other, the state structures and women's NGOs of Karelia understand that they live on a single territory and have a common cause. In 1997, a Commission on Issues of Improving Women's Lives was created in Karelia, at the Republic level, and also at the Petrozavodsk city level. One hopes that the other cities of Karelia will follow the capital's example. Leaders of women's civic organizations are represented on the commissions, alongside high-level officials. Not everything is going the way one might like it to, but we understand that this is only the beginning of a difficult path.